Wait For Skylake???

[akatsulis]

So my current laptop is very slow and lags all the time now, plus the battery only lasts about an hour. I start law school in September and want to get a new laptop.

Ideally I would have already gotten it, but I saw Windows 10 was coming out at the end of July so decided to wait until that came out. However, now I realize the new skylake chips might be coming out within the next couple months and am wondering if I should wait to get a laptop until after they come out.

I'd rather not have to use my current laptop for the first bit of school and then get a new one and have to deal with setting it up and everything during the stresses of first year law school, but if waiting for skylake is really that worth it then I would just deal with it.

I also have no idea if these skylake laptops will be so expensive I wouldn't even get one anyway. Right now I've been looking at getting the Dell XPS 13 without the touchscreen since I'm trying to stay at $1000 or lower.

Any help from someone who knows more about this stuff would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[Mannerlax]

Anything new and topend you can generally expect to cost a lot of money, so it's up to you if you want to spend that money on a new laptop, which if all you're doing is typing up word documents and powerpoints (and other low intensive tasks) may not be worth it.

The Dell XPS 13 sounds like a great laptop from the reviews so I'd say if you're willing to spend the money on it and it's good enough for your needs, go for it. Windows 10 is also free for windows 7 users I believe so if you have a win 7 copy that you can use, you may work out getting 10 for free.

Personally, I'll be waiting until 10 has been out for a while before using it.

 

[akatsulis]

Thanks for the response. Yea I'll be doing mostly research on the internet with lots of tabs, typing in word documents, streaming shows, downloading music, nothing too intense. So does skylake not really affect that too much then?

I've read there's going to be wireless charging, increased performance, new usb port types, and other improvements that make it a huge upgrade, but I just don't know how much that really affects me.

And yea windows 7 users do get 10 free, but I didn't know if it mattered if I got the laptop with 10 already on it versus upgrading to 10 for free.

 

[jaguarskx]

For what you plan on doing with the laptop Skylake is not going to be much of an improvement for you over current laptops using Broadwell generation CPUs. Skylake provides around 5% - 6% more processing performance compared to Broadwell generation CPUs at the same clockspeed based on preliminary benchmarks. Integrated graphics performance will probably increase by around 15% - 20%, but unless you plan on playing games it will not affect what you do.

USB-C is the new type of USB port coming out. But it will take some time before it becomes standard and I am sure there are adapters that can be bought to use a USB-C device in a USB 2.0/3.0 port, and vice versa.

Wireless charging is nice as long as you plan on purchasing a wireless charging pad.

 

[Mannerlax]

Well hopefully we helped you make up your mind man, good luck with law school!

 

[akatsulis]

Yes, thank you guys for the help. I'm going to go ahead and get a laptop once I can figure out which I should get. I'm torn between spending more on the xps 13 or saving $300-400 and getting the asus zenbook ux305. Off to post another thread!